Peter Benchley (Author of Jaws) edit data Peter Bradford Benchley was an American author best known for writing the novel Jaws and co-writing the screenplay for its highly successful film adaptation. The success of the book led to many publishers commissioning books about mutant rats, rabid dogs and the like threatening communities. The subsequent film directed by Steven Spielberg and co-written by Benchley is generally acknowledged as the first summer blockbuster. Benchley also wrote The Deep and The Island which were also adapted into films. Benchley was from a literary family. He was the son of author Nathaniel Benchley and grandson of Algonquin Round Table founder Robert Benchley. His younger brother, Nat Benchley, is a writer and actor. Peter Benchley was an alumnus of Phillips Peter Bradford Benchley was an American author best known for writing the novel Jaws and co-writing the screenplay for its highly successful film adaptation. The success of the book led to many publishers commissioning books about mutant rats, rabid dogs and the like threatening communities. The subsequent film directed by Steven Spielberg and co-written by Benchley is generally acknowledged as the first summer blockbuster. Benchley also wrote The Deep and The Island which were also adapted into films.

Benchley was from a literary family. He was the son of author Nathaniel Benchley and grandson of Algonquin Round Table founder Robert Benchley. His younger brother, Nat Benchley, is a writer and actor. Peter Benchley was an alumnus of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University. After graduating from college, he worked for The Washington Post, then as an editor at Newsweek and a speechwriter in the White House. He developed the idea of a man-eating shark terrorising a community after reading of a fisherman Frank Mundus catching a 4,550 pound great white shark off the coast of Long Island in 1964. He also drew some material from the tragic Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916. His reasonably successful second novel, The Deep, is about a honeymooning couple discovering two sunken treasures on the Bermuda reefs -- 17th century Spanish gold and a fortune in World War Two-era morphine -- who are subsequently targeted by a drug syndicate. This 1976 novel is based on Benchley's chance meeting in Bermuda with diver Teddy Tucker while writing a story for National Geographic.

Benchley co-wrote the screenplay for the 1977 film release, along with Tracy Keenan Wynn and an uncredited Tom Mankiewicz. Directed by Peter Yates and starring Robert Shaw, Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset, The Deep was the second-highest grossing release of 1977 after Star Wars, although its box office tally fell well short of Jaws. The Island, published in 1979, was a story of descendants of 17th century pirates who terrorize pleasure craft in the Caribbean, leading to the Bermuda Triangle mystery. Benchley again wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation. But the movie version of The Island, starring Michael Caine and David Warner, failed at the box office when released in 1980. During the 1980s, Benchley wrote three novels that did not sell as well as his previous works. However, Girl of the Sea of Cortez, a beguiling John Steinbeck-type fable about man's complicated relationship with the sea, was far and away his best reviewed book and has attracted a considerable cult following since its publication.

Sea of Cortez signposted Benchley's growing interest in ecological issues and anticipated his future role as an impassioned and intelligent defender of the importance of redressing the current imbalance between human activities and the marine environment. Q Clearance published in 1986 was written from his experience as a staffer in the Johnson White House. Rummies (aka Lush), which appeared in 1989, is a semi-autobiographical work, loosely inspired by the Benchley family's history of alcohol abuse. While the first half of the novel is a relatively straightforward (and harrowing) account of a suburbanite's descent into alcoholic hell, the second part -- which takes place at a New Mexico substance abuse clinic -- veers off into wildly improbable thriller-type territory. He returned to nautical themes in 1991's Beast written about a giant squid threatening Bermuda. Beast was brought to the small screen as a made for TV movie in 1996, under the slightly altered title The Beast. His next novel, White Shark, was published in 1994.

The story of a Nazi-created genetically engineered shark/human hybrid failed to achieve popular or critical success with Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of the New York Times saying it "looks more like Arnold Schwarzenegger than any fish". ("Peter Benchley" Contemporary Authors Onl ...more Peter Benchley, Author of 'Jaws,' Dies at 65 - The New York Times The New York Times Books |Peter Benchley, Author of 'Jaws,' Dies at 65 Search Continue reading the main story Correction Appended Peter Benchley, whose 1974 novel "Jaws" turned shark attacks into a national obsession and who later used what he called his "fish story" to help promote oceanic conservation, died yesterday morning at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 65. The cause was pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive scarring of the lungs, said his wife, Wendy. Even before it was published, "Jaws," Mr. Benchley's first novel, was becoming a sensation as word trickled out of the publishing business that a blockbuster story was on the way.

Movie rights were bought up, magazine articles commissioned, and the great white shark was thrust into the spotlight in a way that foreshadowed the current national obsession with "The Da Vinci Code." For several years in the mid-1970's, the great white shark was the subject of essays and comedy skits, swimmers teased one another with the foreboding "baa-dum" theme music from the Steven Spielberg film, and lifeguards and town elders tried to assure vacationers that it was safe to go into the water. Mr. Benchley, who even found himself enduring the wrath of Jacques Cousteau, said repeatedly in later years that he regretted making the great white shark into a villain. But he was always fascinated with the sea, having spent summers as a youth on Nantucket, and he returned there again and again for topics for his books, including "The Deep" in 1976, "The Island" in 1979 and "Beast," a 1991 thriller about a giant squid that is driven to attack humans because its natural food sources have been depleted.

Continue reading the main story He came from a home with deep literary roots, the son of the novelist Nathaniel Benchley and the grandson of Robert Benchley, the humorist and drama editor of The New Yorker and Life magazines. And his first book, a travel memoir titled "Time and a Ticket," published by Houghton Mifflin in 1964, reflected some of his upbringing as a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and of Harvard, where he graduated cum laude with a degree in English in 1961. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The memoir recounted a post-graduation trip around the world where the illusions of an idealistic young man are colored by the realization that what most people are searching for in an island paradise is "a place that is spoiled, a place that looks unchanged but that has -- hidden among the trees -- aqualungs, water skis, sailboats, movie theaters, saloons, night clubs and dance bands." Before the memoir was published, Mr. Benchley went to work for The Washington Post, where he wrote news articles and obituaries, later moving to Newsweek.

In 1967, he was hired as a speechwriter for the Johnson administration, where he befriended Tim Wirth, then a White House fellow and later a United States senator from Colorado. "Peter was a wonderfully graceful writer," Mr. Wirth said. "He was very political and really committed," something that became evident in his later life as he embraced the cause of ocean conservation. It was while working as a freelance writer that he was invited to lunch by Tom Congdon, an editor at Doubleday, who asked if he had any ideas for a novel. In fact, he had. As he later described it, he said, "I've been thinking about a novel about a great white shark that appears off a Long Island resort and afflicts it." The idea came from a news article he had read about a fisherman who caught a 4,500-pound great white shark off Long Island in 1964. Having spent many hours fishing off Nantucket with his father, he knew of sharks, and he believed he knew how to tell a story. Mr. Congdon agreed and acquired the right to publish the book for a small advance. Mr.

Benchley wrote in a rented room over a garage in Pennington, N.J., the author John McPhee, a longtime friend, said. "He was Robert Benchley's grandson when he was sitting in that garage," Mr. McPhee said. "He had to deal with that. But he wrote this book out of his imagination, about a shark, and that led him into a million other places, an interest in natural history, and made him into quite an expert about the subject. The cascade of money that poured upon him did not change him much from the person who was sitting in that garage." Mr. Benchley's conservation work included serving as a spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund and working with WildAid, traveling to teach about sharks and to try to warn against the practice of killing sharks for their fins, a delicacy especially popular in Asia. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a brother, Nathaniel, of Manhattan; three children, Tracy Benchley Turner of Rye, N.Y.; Clayton, of Manhattan; and Christopher, a student at the University of Pennsylvania; and five grandchildren.

For their 40th wedding anniversary last year, Peter and Wendy Benchley went diving, looking for great white sharks in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego. "Many of the letters he got were from people who read 'Jaws' as a kid and were captivated by it, and who then went on to become marine biologists or who were teachers who would focus some of their time on the ocean," Wendy Benchley said. "Maybe when 'Jaws' first came out people were scared of the water. But the next generation found a great adventure story, and many of them wanted to learn about the ocean. That thrilled Peter." Correction: February 16, 2006, Thursday An obituary on Monday about Peter Benchley, the author of "Jaws," referred incorrectly in some copies to the prep school from which he graduated. It was Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., not Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.

Mindhole Blowers: 20 Facts About Jaws That Might Make You Want to Scream, "Shaaark!" By Cindy Davis | Seriously Random Lists | June 2, 2015 | Comments ( ) In 1975, after a long labor and great pains, Steven Spielberg birthed this first summer blockbuster and the highest grossing film of all time (at that time). With a great cast portraying memorable characters, a picturesque location and a believable (and much maligned) monstrous foe to root against, Jaws left audiences alternately terrified and ecstatic. The film still holds up today and in a testament to Spielberg’s efforts, I still jump every single time that head rolls out… If you’re a fan, the documentary attached to the 30th Anniversary edition DVD is well worth a watch, with commentary by Spielberg, Benchley, Scheider, Dreyfuss, David Brown, Richard Zanuck, Carl Gottlieb, John Williams and many crew members. 1. For years, author Peter Benchley thought about writing a book about sharks that attacked people and what would happen if the sharks wouldn’t go away.

In 1964, he read a story about a fisherman who caught a “4550 pound great white shark off the shores of Long Island, and thought, what if one of those wouldn’t go away?” In 1971, a publisher told Benchley it would make an interesting story and so he wrote the novel. 2. The sport fisherman Benchley had read about was Frank Mundus, a “colorful character” who in fact, harpooned that white shark (estimated weight—no scale—of 4500 pounds) and still holds the record (with Donnie Braddick) for the largest fish caught by rod and reel: A 3,427 pound great white shark. Though Benchley denied it, many sources (including Jaws screenplay writer and actor Carl Gottlieb) say the character of Quint was based on Mundus (who died in 2008). Braddick and Mundus: 3. Benchley said he thought over novel titles for months, right up until 20 minutes before production.

He thought most of them were too pretentious: The Stillness in the Water, A Silence in the Deep, Leviathan Rising, Jaws of Death, Jaws of Leviathan. In the last meeting with his editor, Benchley said the only word they could agree upon was “Jaws;” it was short and would fit on a cover jacket so they went with it. They didn’t think its prospects were good for a first novel about a fish—it was sent out to several literary houses and a book of the month club. After the club and Reader’s Digest both made it a selection, Bantam bought Jaws and then it immediately went out to movie auctions. Universal bought the rights for $150,000, which was for Benchley, “the moon.” 4. Producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck (A Few Good Men, Driving Miss Daisy, The Sugarland Express) loved the book, though Brown said they never thought about how they would get a shark to jump up on a boat and eat a man. He thought if they had read the novel twice, they might have had more time to think about the technical issues and not made the film.

When the film was first sold, a director (unidentified on the commentary, listed as Dick Richards on Wikipedia) who always wanted to make a film about a “whale” was attached—but things didn’t work out and Richards was dropped. 5. Steven Spielberg said he first became aware of Jaws when he saw the name on a large stack of papers; he didn’t know what the title meant and thought it might refer to a dentist. The book was not yet in the national consciousness. He read it over a weekend and thinking back, said he remembers Jaws as a time in his life of great courage and stupidity. His first thoughts were: “Wow, this is like a movie I just made about a truck and a driver (Duel). Jaws and Duel both have four letters, they’re both about a leviathan going after man.” He felt it was kind of a sequel to Duel and was very interested because of that. 6. Zanuck and Brown wanted to get rid of the novel’s backstories, just do a straight-line adventure story.

Benchley did the script adaptation and handed it over to Spielberg, who didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do with the movie—so he wrote an entire script himself (a few of the scenes survived). The director said writing the script was an exercise for him to decide what he wanted Jaws to be. Brown and Zanuck next suggested Spielberg go to Howard Sackler, a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who wrote The Great White Hope and was also an expert scuba diver (as is Benchley). Very familiar with sharks and underwater activity, Sackler didn’t want any credit for, but committed to doing the film. The Screen Actor’s Guild contract was about to expire at the end of the year (1973) and the studio decreed that no movie would be started that could not be finished by June 30th of that year, because they didn’t want to be stuck (with an unfinished film). Spielberg, Zanuck and Brown met to discuss how quickly Jaws could be made and Spielberg said he didn’t have a finished script yet. Finally, Brown suggested Carl Gottlieb (“The Odd Couple, The Bob Newhart Show,” The Jerk).

Gottlieb was first hired as actor and he helped with improv, along with contributing to the script. Gottlieb predicted they’d be doing for the water what Psycho had done for showers and commented that to this day, he hears about how people wouldn’t go swimming anymore after seeing Jaws. 7. Spielberg had written a different introduction for Quint, in which Quint was at a movie theater watching Moby Dick, laughing because it was so silly with the mechanical whale. Quint continued to laugh so hard and so maliciously that people got up and walked out of the theater, until finally Quint was completely alone in the theater, with his laughter echoing out into the streets. The scene was squashed because the director was unable to secure the rights to Moby Dick, relating (very carefully) that “Gregory Peck felt it wasn’t his proudest work; he didn’t want it to be made fun of or even to be in the film at all.” 8. Zanuck thought they should have footage of real sharks, so Australian experts Ron and Valerie Taylor (“Shark Hunters,” Blue Water, White Death) were hired.

(Peter Gimble, who directed the documentary Blue Water, White Death was asked to do camera work, but because he insisted he direct the film, was not involved.) Since the sharks the Taylors worked with were only 14 feet, Spielberg looked for a little person to be used in their footage to scale the shark. The director hired Carl Rizzo, who came in to meet Spielberg with blood dripping from his head — Rizzo explained he’d just had an accident at the studio’s front gate. Spielberg thought Rizzo brave and felt he must really have wanted the job to come in that condition. The Taylors also used two small dummies in their footage of sharks attacking an underwater cage, but said that “Carl looked better and could move around.” Ron Taylor said they’d been working for about a week, trying to get a shark attacking the cage, but that sharks don’t normally do that. Finally one day, a shark came over and got its nose stuck in a bridle; sharks go crazy when they are trapped. So the shark went berserk and they used that footage (with an empty cage), because it looked as if the shark was attacking the cage. Taylor said it was the scariest thing he’d ever seen.

9. Roy Scheider was hired after Spielberg had begun searching for an unknown actor; the studio wanted “a name.” At a party, Scheider’s agent introduced him to Spielberg as the director was describing the story to someone. Scheider said, “That’s a great story, how about me?” 10. Scheider improvised the film’s most famous line: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” 11. Jon Voight, Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges were considered for the part of Hooper; they each turned it down “for one reason or other.” Richard Dreyfuss was cast because Spielberg loved American Graffiti (the actor was suggested by George Lucas). Dreyfuss said he loved the exciting story as told by Spielberg, but when asked if he wanted to make the film he said he’d rather watch it because, “it’s going to be a bitch to shoot.” A few months later, Dreyfuss went to the premiere of his own film and saw himself as a leading man for the first time; he didn’t like his performance, saying “I figured I’d better get a job really soon.” He called Spielberg and asked to do the film. 12.

Spielberg’s first choice to play Quint was Lee Marvin, but Marvin said he liked to fish for real, not in a movie. His second choice was Sterling Hayden (Spielberg was a fan of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb), but Hayden couldn’t do it. Producer David Brown suggested Shaw (liked him in The Sting). Spielberg screened A Man for All Seasons and From Russia with Love and decided on Shaw, saying he wished he had thought of the actor himself. Dreyfuss said Shaw was “the most extraordinarily, unnecessarily competitive person he’d ever met.” 13. Production Designer Joe Alves was sent to scout possible locations; they’d thought of Jamaica because of the water clarity. Martha’s Vineyard had never been photographed for a feature film before because of strict rules. But it was the only place they could go on the east coast 12 miles out to sea, there was a sandy bottom 30 feet below where they could put sharks and cameras down—no matter what direction cameras turned, land couldn’t be seen. Spielberg felt it was important the audience would feel there was no shore to run back to.

The only set built was Quint’s shack; they had to promise to put everything back exactly. The billboard had to be put up, shot and then taken down that day. Nothing could alter the landscape or harmony of the island. 14. Stunt woman Susan Backlinie (first victim) wasn’t an actress and Spielberg was nervous hiring her, but ended up loving her.The director thought it would be much scarier not to see the shark at first—if it had come up out of the water, right away, Jaws “would have been monster movie.” Spielberg himself did the first jerk-down. Backlinie had a cable attached near her stomach, “he’d pull and she’d throw her head back.” According to Backlinie, they wanted to put her on an electric wench, but she didn’t want that, so they used man power. Cables ran from each side of her, to men back on beach. Several men pulled back and forth and she’d throw her arms to make it look more violent than it was. Sound re-recording (done back at the studio) had the stunt woman leaning back over a baby bassinet while Spielberg poured water over her head, as she screamed to get the appropriate sounds.

For the victim’s hand found in the sand, Spielberg bought a fake arm which he said was too shiny and plastic looking. He instead had a person buried in the sand with her arm sticking up and put little crabs around it. 15. Spielberg said that had he met local, Craig Kingsbury (Ben Gardner) before hiring Shaw, he might have hired him to play Quint. The director called Kingsbury “the purest form of Quint” and “a drunk who drove cows around town and ad libbed his own lines.” Quint’s “Not like going down the pond chasin’ bluegills and tommycods” line came from Kingsbury. Meanwhile, Ben’s famous head popping out scene was highly coordinated by Spielberg for maximum scare. The director played with the timing and tested the scene with preview audiences and crew, choosing the version with the biggest reaction. 16. With little idea as to how to create a huge, mechanical shark, Joe Alves was thrilled to find retired Special Effects man, Bob Mattey, who had done the giant squid for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Mattey was very enthusiastic that they could make the creature instead of using miniatures.

They decidef upon a 25 foot model because they felt it would be both formidable and credible. Alves borrowed a real set of shark jaws from Steinhart Aquarium and got the proportions for the model shark, “Bruce” (named after Spielberg’s lawyer). A team of experts (plastics, electronics, hydraulics, etc.) was assembled and the Taylors were brought in to comment and advise on the fake shark’s movement. They created several shark components and a full shark (Spielberg called the full model “The Great White Turd” and the effects team “Special Defects”), which on its first test run in the water immediately sank to the ocean floor. Richard Dreyfuss joked about constantly hearing “The shark is not working” over handheld radios everyone carried. Because of all the issues with the shark, shooting went way over schedule and budget, with Spielberg unable to say when the film would be finished; “Show Me the Way to Go Home” would bring tears to crew-members’ eyes. The crew did get to shore every Sunday, but Spielberg never went because he was afraid he wouldn’t come back. 17.

Spielberg related a story about a big event being held, with a buffet for all the cast and crew and tons of wonderful food and desserts. Roy Scheider began a food fight by throwing mashed potatoes and gravy at Spielberg and “…it turned into a bit of a Three Stooges brawl. The help serving dinner came out and became hysterical and it was a tremendous blowing off of steam.” Then they all — covered in food — jumped into a pool. 18. Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss were out on a boat with a sound man when some sort of malfunction caused the boat to leak and start sinking. While the boat driver was trying to get back to shore before they sank, Spielberg sent out another boat, telling people, “Get the actors off the boat!” Sound man John Carter held up a sign reading “Fuck the actors, save the sound man!” A camera onboard got wet, but the film inside was recovered and usable. 19. It was Robert Shaw’s idea to take the cap off his tooth when Quint and Hooper compare scars. According to Spielberg, Shaw also rewrote part of Spielberg’s favorite scene, the Indianapolis speech (conceived by Howard Sackler and written by two scriptwriters).

Dreyfuss said that as an actor one often has to feign interest in the story another actor is telling, but that Shaw’s tale was “one of the most riveting things he’d ever seen or heard.” 20. When Spielberg first heard Academy Award winning composer “Johnny” Williams (Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Schindler’s List, Empire of the Sun) play the Jaws music (on a piano), the director thought it was a joke—it was too simple. He asked Williams to play it again and then again, and “suddenly it was right.” Jaws won the Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score and is ranked sixth on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years of Film Scores. Spielberg and Bruce: Cindy Davis still suffers moments of panic when swimming in the ocean.

10 Things You Might Not Know About 'Jaws' | Movie News | Movies.com "Heartthrobs are a dime a dozen." Movies.com > Movie News > 10 Things You Might Not Know About 'Jaws' 10 Things You Might Not Know About 'Jaws' 10 Things You Might Not Know About 'Jaws' Tweet Welcome to Jaws Week ! When it was announced that Steven Spielberg's Jaws was arriving on Blu-ray, we thought it'd be perfect to dedicate an entire week to the movie that created the summer blockbuster. Every day this week we'll be posting an assortment of really fun features tied to the film, its production, its legacy, its fans, its merchandise and so much more. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws has become a bonafide pop culture phenomenon since it was released back in 1975. It’s been the subject of books, documentaries, countless Internet articles, and millions of discussions held on beaches around the globe. The film has been dissected and analyzed so thoroughly and so often that it’s hard to find new tidbits about the production that weren’t already common knowledge.

Everyone knows Spielberg named the mechanical sharks Bruce after his attorney Bruce Ramer and that they rarely worked like they were supposed to. Most people know the shoot was incredibly difficult and went way over schedule and budget. That being said, there are still some interesting bits of Jaws lore out there that perhaps not everyone knows, and we’ve gathered up ten of them for your consideration. 1. Jaws' First Victim Was a Mermaid Actress Susan Backlinie isn’t instantly recognizable by name (unless you’re a hardcore Jaws fanatic), but she’ll always have a place in cinematic history for playing the killer great white’s first victim – skinny-dipper Chrissie Watkins. What few people know is that Backlinie’s scene in Jaws wasn’t the first time the actress performed in the water. The future thespian honed her skills as one of the fabled mermaids at the Weeki Wachee Springs attraction in Hernando County, Florida. Backlinie donned a tail and performed up to three shows per day in the crystal-clear spring, delighting audiences with choreographed underwater gymnastics. The spring is fresh water, so there was never a mermaid vs.

shark showdown, but clearly the time spent underwater helped her prepare for her biggest and most important role. Oh, and contrary to popular belief, Backlinie did not break her ribs while being tugged back and forth in the opening scene. Despite the popularity of that rumor, the actress and director Steven Spielberg have never once mentioned her being injured during the shoot. 2. Jaws Was a Last-Minute Title It’s hard to imagine Jaws with a different name after all these years – it’s really the perfect title for the book and the film. It’s short, it’s catchy, and it captured the terrible essence of the monster shark that serves as its antagonist. However, author Peter Benchley talked at length about how he struggled to come up with a title for the book. He had multiple options – including The Stillness in the Water, Leviathan Rising, The Jaws of Death, and The Jaws of Leviathan – but he wisely rejected them all as being too “pretentious, melodramatic or just weird.” The author finally settled on Jaws roughly 20 minutes before the book was scheduled to start production – and the rest is history. 3.

Author Peter Benchley Has a Cameo in the Film Speaking of Peter Benchley (who passed away in 2006), the author not only wrote the novel that inspired Spielberg’s film (and earned a screenwriter’s credit for his work on the script), but he also turns up in front of the camera. Benchely makes his big-screen debut as a reporter covering Amity’s reopening of the beaches on the Fourth of July. He’s suitably pretentious in the sequence. 4. Robert Shaw Was not Spielberg's First Choice to Play Quint It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw as Chief Brody, Matt Hooper and Quint – but there were other casting ideas floating around before those actors were cast in the film. While it’s become fairly well known that Spielberg initially considered tough guy Lee Marvin to play the role of shark-hating Quint in the original Jaws, Marvin wasn’t the only actor on the shortlist for the part. Spielberg also expressed interest in casting actor Sterling Hayden as the salty fisherman. Hayden had to decline because he reportedly had tax problems and any income from acting went to the IRS.

A plan was hatched to pay the actor the guild minimum for his performance and purchase one of his written works for an exorbitant amount to circumnavigate the government, but it was eventually decided that this wouldn’t fool the IRS. The actor didn’t get the part – and it instead went to Robert Shaw, who’d previously worked with producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown on 1973’s The Sting. We think it’s interesting to imagine Marvin and Hayden as Quint, but it’s really impossible to envision anyone topping Shaw’s masterful performance in the part. Things worked out for the best, it would seem. 5. Hooper Wasn’t Supposed to Live Jaws is one of the rare exceptions where a movie is actually better than the book that inspired it. Peter Benchley’s novel is a pretty decent summer thriller, but it had several subplots and scenes that were wisely cut from the shooting script. One involved Hooper (who was the younger brother of an old flame of the chief’s wife) having an affair with Ellen Brody and was wisely jettisoned before the first draft was written – as was a plot strand linking Mayor Vaughn to the mafia as well.

That being said, Hooper died in Benchley’s novel after entering the cage with hopes of killing the shark once and for all. This carried over into the script and was even storyboarded, but fate had different plans for Dreyfuss’ character. Shark experts Ron and Valerie Taylor were hired to shoot second unit footage of real great white sharks in Australia, but unfortunately, there were no real sharks quite as massive as the mechanical Bruce. To keep things to scale, a smaller cage and a tiny actor (4’11” Carl Rizzo) were brought in. The Taylors spent weeks trying to goad a great white into attacking their miniature cage – and it finally happened when a 14-foot shark got stuck in the cabling. The creature went ballistic, thrashing about in an attempt to free itself and the finished footage wound up in the film. There was just one problem – Rizzo wasn’t in the cage when the footage was shot, and the stunt performer had no intention of ever getting in the cage again once he saw it.

Without a person behind the bars, Spielberg couldn’t properly sell Hooper’s demise to audiences – so Hooper instead escaped the cage, hid on the ocean floor, and only returns to the surface in the aftermath of Jaws’ climax. 6. Some Very Famous Voices Provided Additional Dialogue in the Film Back in the days before Jaws, whenever a filmmaker needed background chatter for his film he’d basically pull a stock library track for the sound department to use so that the audience could hear the surrounding inconsequential extras talking but not understand what they were saying. According to The Jaws Log author Carl Gottlieb, this was called “Walla” – because it was usually made by a group of people saying nonsense like “walla-walla” or “rhubarb, sassafrass” over and over and then distorted until it was unrecognizable as anything other than background noise. However, in Jaws, Gottlieb and his wife Allison assembled a group of actors and made a track that’s original to Spielberg’s film. Even more impressive is that they got some people to record the dialogue who would go on to big careers in their own right.

Amongst the talent assembled for the ADR looping was Michael McKean (This Is Spinal Tap, Laverne & Shirley), Howard Hesseman (WKRP in Cincinatti), and Harry Shearer – who provides the voices of Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner and many other characters on The Simpsons. Spielberg’s idea to use his own team of voice actors to record this background sound quickly caught on – and Gottlieb’s wife Allison formed the Allison Caine Group – the first postproduction ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) and looping group in film history. Meanwhile, in another scene onboard the Orca, Ellen Brody radios to check in on the men – and the radio operator who connects Mrs. Brody with the boat is none other than Spielberg himself – a surprise vocal cameo that most people are unaware of. 7. Spielberg Wasn’t Impressed with the Jaws theme John Williams' music is an integral part of Jaws – and Bruce’s theme has become one of the most recognized pieces of music in modern culture, used to denote danger (either real or imagined) in films, television shows, commercials… well, pretty much anywhere. In a strange twist, that music almost wasn’t used.

Spielberg relates that the first time he heard Williams play the iconic tune on a piano, he thought it was a joke. The music, comprised of just two notes, was “too simple” in the director’s estimation. Williams kept playing it – and Spielberg kept listening and “suddenly it was right.” We’re glad Spielberg gave Williams’ composition another shot – it’s impossible to imagine Jaws without it, particularly since that music (along with some yellow barrels) often served as a stand in to let audiences know the shark was around when the finicky animatronic beast wouldn’t work. 8. Quint Was Based on Two Real People and One Appears in the Film Robert Shaw’s crusty old sea-dog Quint remains one of our all-time favorite film characters – but the shark-hating sailor in Benchley’s novel was inspired by Frank Mundus.

Mundus was a fisherman who hunted great whites for sport in the waters off of Long Island (he holds the record for largest fish ever caught on rod and reel for a 3,400+ pound great white he caught years ago), and Benchley found the story of Mundus’ earlier encounter with a great white (reportedly 4,500 pounds, but never officially weighed) fascinating. He built Jaws around the idea of a shark that size coming into a community and not going away. Mundus served as a perfect inspiration for Quint – a man who was no stranger to hunting sharks himself. The film’s version of Quint, meanwhile, bears more than a passing resemblance to Craig Kingsbury, a local fisherman who plays the ill-fated Ben Gardner in the film. Some of Quint’s best lines (including his statement to the town “It’s not like going down the pond chasin’ bluegills and tommycods…”) were direct quotes from Kingsbury – who also ad-libbed much of his own dialogue. Still, perhaps his best quote was in response to the famous scene where his corpse pops out of a hole in his boat after Hooper has just pulled a giant shark tooth from the wreckage.

Kingsbury would later say, “Now, how the hell that shark spit the head back in the boat after he bit it off, I'll never know.” Kingsbury was hired to teach Shaw how a character like Quint would speak – which led to him spending weeks with the actor regaling him with stories about killing sharks. Kingsbury’s efforts were integral in making Shaw’s Quint one of cinema’s most memorable – and quotable – characters. 9. The Film’s Most Famous Line Wasn’t in the Script Jaws is filled with memorable dialogue – from Hooper’s infamous “well this was not a boat accident” to pretty much everything Quint says, the film is eminently quotable. However, there’s one line that stands out above all the others – a line that even people who aren’t particularly huge fans of the film know well.

When Bruce pops his head up out of the chum slick just off the stern of the Orca, Roy Scheider is stunned – so stunned that he backs up into the ship’s cabin and tells Quint “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” It’s a perfect conclusion to a great scene (we’ve just gotten our first real good look at Bruce the Shark – and we’re thinking the exact same thing as an audience), and the best part of all? Scheider improvised it on the spot. 10. Richard Dreyfuss Originally Passed on the Film The casting of Jaws was almost as challenging as making the actual film. We’ve already talked about all the various choices for Quint before Robert Shaw landed the part, but now let’s take a second to talk about marine biologist Matt Hooper. Spielberg’s first choice for the part was actor Jon Voight, but actors such as Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms and Joel Grey were also considered for the role. Eventually, George Lucas suggested Richard Dreyfuss. The actor had made a favorable impression on Lucas after he appeared in American Graffiti.

Spielberg approached the actor, but Dreyfuss initially rejected the part, saying it sounded like a film he’d rather watch than make. Dreyfuss soon had a change of heart, though. After attending a screening of his film The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Dreyfuss became convinced that his performance was dreadful and that no one would ever hire him again. He immediately called Spielberg to ask if the part of Hooper was still open and agreed to take the gig with the idea that he’d have at least one more chance to impress the world. In a funny twist of events, Dreyfuss was also convinced that Jaws would bomb after they finished filming. He was completely wrong on that one.

Benchley, novelist who wrote ‘Jaws,’ dies at 65 | Variety Benchley, novelist who wrote ‘Jaws,’ dies at 65 February 13, 2006 | 09:00PM PT 1974 tome was the basis for Spielberg's blockbuster film Peter Benchley, whose novel “Jaws” terrorized millions of swimmers even as the author himself became an advocate for the conservation of sharks, died at home Saturday in Princeton, N.J., at age 65. Wendy Benchley, married to the author for 41 years, said the cause of death was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive scarring of the lungs. Thanks to Benchley’s 1974 novel and Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film, the simple act of ocean swimming became synonymous with fatal horror — of still water followed by ominous, pumping music, then teeth and blood and panic. “Spielberg certainly made the most superb movie; Peter was very pleased,” Wendy Benchley told the Associated Press.

“But Peter kept telling people the book was fiction, it was a novel, and that he no more took responsibility for the fear of sharks than Mario Puzo took responsibility for the Mafia.” Benchley, the grandson of humorist Robert Benchley and son of author Nathaniel Benchley, was born in New York City in 1940. He attended the elite Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, then graduated from Harvard in 1961. He worked at the Washington Post and Newsweek and spent two years as a speechwriter for President Johnson, writing some difficult speeches about the Vietnam War. The author’s interest in sharks was lifelong, beginning with childhood visits to Nantucket Island in Massachusetts and heightening in the mid-1960s when he read about a fisherman catching a 4,550-pound great white shark off Long Island — the setting for his novel. “I thought to myself, What would happen if one of those came around and wouldn’t go away?” he recalled. Benchley didn’t start the novel until 1971 because he was too busy working with his day jobs.

While Benchley co-wrote the screenplay for “Jaws,” and authored several other novels, including “The Deep” and “The Island,” his wife said he was especially proud of his conservation work. He served on the national council of Environmental Defense, hosted numerous television wildlife programs, gave speeches around the world and wrote articles for National Geographic and other publications. “He cared very much about sharks. He spent most of his life trying to explain to people that if you are in the ocean, you’re in the shark’s territory, so it behooves you to take precautions,” Wendy Benchley said. Besides his wife, Benchley is survived by three children and five grandchildren. A small family service will take place in Princeton.

Question: Who wrote the novel 'Jaws'?
Answer: Peter Benchley